Let me tell another story:
Once upon a time, a girl was born to a family in Upstate New York. She helped her parents at their deli, and she studied, and she helped her little sisters with their homework. She was very smart and she put herself through college and married a kind man and had two children and landed a job that paid for a mortgage and vacations and college funds.
The second story wasn’t as exciting as the first. No one would gasp or widen their eyes or cry while listening to it. It wasn’t mournful or melancholy or romantic.
But it was an active story. It was a story where the girl took charge, where she owned her agency, where she went out and forged her own path. It was a real story. It was a powerful, heroic story. We didn’t tell it enough. We didn’t always acknowledge this story was a story at all, a story with a heroine, and the heroine was my mother.
* * *
I left Nantucket amid a whirl of tearful goodbyes and hugs and promises to text. I hugged Mrs. Henderson and Ellie Mae and Jane, and waved goodbye, and bumped my suitcase down the steps of the porch, just as I’d bumped it up months ago. Mom and I rolled our luggage through the colorful downtown, still picturesque, still all-American. I mentally said goodbye to everything we passed, trying to print it on my memory. The heavy tree branches, the uneven sidewalks, the sign posts, the flower pots.
Then it was time to climb aboard the ferry, to say goodbye for the final time. Mom and I stood by the rail of the Hy-Line catamaran, watching Nantucket shrink into the distance, until it disappeared into the brilliant blue sea.
Within a short hour, we reached Hyannis, where Dad waited with the family car and a hug. We swung our luggage into the trunk and set off across the Cape. We waded through the traffic at the bridge, and merged onto 495. The ocean was replaced by trees, the salt by the scent of the forest. It took less than three hours to get home, to turn off the highway onto the winding roads of South Hadley, to drive down streets I’d memorized a decade ago, to pull into the driveway of home.
And Mom set everything in motion.
She hired a lawyer. She contacted the museums. She talked to specialists in restitution. The museums and private collectors might have more lawyers than us and more money, but they didn’t have our story, and Mom made sure everyone had our story. After our local paper published the story, Twitter ran with it. BuzzFeed, HuffPo, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times covered it. A story containing diamonds, Nazis, and lost history? People ate it up.
Goldman jewelry might be worth a fair amount of cash, but most museums decided good PR was worth more.
“What are we going to do with all of these?” Mom asked in bewilderment after we heard a pair of sapphire earrings valued at twenty thousand dollars would be sent to us.
“Are you kidding?” Dad asked from behind his laptop. He pushed his glasses higher. “I’m going to wear them to work.”
Mom’s question wasn’t too serious: we’d keep a few pieces and sell most back to museums, to pay for my college education and Dave’s college education and the college education of all our cousins, since, of course, the money didn’t belong to Mom alone, but to her two younger sisters and their families as well. We reached out to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to see if they’d be interested in hosting an auction for many of the pieces, and they said yes.
“We don’t have to do this,” Mom said, before we sent the confirmation email. We were in the living room, windows and tabs spread across our computer screens. I’d inherited my messiness from her; Dad kept his email at inbox zero (Mom’s currently numbered close to ten thousand unread messages, which caused Dad visceral pain). “For O’ma’s necklace, in particular. You could keep it.”
I looked at the necklace, which I’d draped across my knee for no better reason than I liked to look at it. My great-grandparents had been jewelers. Good jewelers.
Part of me did want to keep it. O’ma had wanted this necklace so badly, and no wonder—it was the only thing she had left of her parents, and a huge piece of financial stability. And I’d spent all summer trying to find out what happened to it.
But.
It was so tangled up in Noah, this necklace. I wanted to look at it forever and I never wanted to look at it again.
“No,” I told Mom. “It’s the most valuable piece in the collection. It’ll bring in the most money. And I think it’s important to donate the money.”
So Mom sent the email, which—stupidly, bizarrely—felt like I’d cut ties with Noah all over again.
Focusing on the Goldman jewelry scattered throughout Europe served as a solid distraction from him. Most of the time, he didn’t infiltrate my thoughts. Most of the time, I could pack him up into a little box in the back of my head.
But at night the box opened and all the demons came out and there was no Pandora at the bottom, no hope, no anything.
I missed him.
But missing someone didn’t mean I’d made the wrong decision. Better to have a clean break. Better to move on.
Wasn’t it?
Was I just afraid? Was I more scared of actually being in a relationship than of my pride getting hurt? Maybe. After all, being in a relationship meant letting someone else in completely. It felt like flinging myself into a void with utter abandon. And that was terrifying.
Because what if I did, what if I flung myself at Noah and told him I wanted him, I adored him, I loved him, I was one hundred percent committed, and he wasn’t? What if he broke my heart?
Again.
Or what if he said yes, he did want to be with me, and three months passed, six months passed, a year passed, and then he said no, he was done, we were done? We would fall apart and I would fall apart and it would be worse than this time. It would be worse than anything.
And he didn’t care about me as much as I cared about him, if I was thinking about it logically. You had to believe what people told you, and he had told me he would never give up on the person he loved; he would be with them, no matter what. Noah believed if you made promises, you kept them. He believed if you loved someone, you fought for them.
But he hadn’t fought to stay with me. He hadn’t texted. He’d let me go after one fight. Yes, I’d told him to go. Yes, a relationship was a two-way street. But if Noah actually wanted to be with me, he wouldn’t have let me walk away so easily.
And he had.
So I would let him walk away, too. It would be better for us both, in the end. People recovered from heartbreak. We’d be fine. I couldn’t regret what had happened, because while my heart had broken, if I thought about it, really thought it through—it’d been worth it.
* * *
A week after I came home from Nantucket, school arrived, as inevitable as the changing seasons. Niko picked me up in her old beat-up Toyota, with the top peeling off the ceiling and a side door no longer capable of opening. (“Barack took Michelle out on a date in a car with a hole in the floor,” she liked to remind us. “I’m destined for great things.”)
Brooke already sat in the passenger seat, and she handed me a hot chocolate from Dunkin as I climbed in. “Woo! Senior year!”
“Go Turtles,” Niko said. (Turtles were not our mascot, but Niko had spent the past three years insisting they were.) She craned her head to give my outfit a once-over: a red skirt and a black top, with earrings to match. “Solid choice. Should have worn the necklace though.”
“I didn’t get my matching evening gown dry-cleaned in time. And look at you! Really breaking out of your mold!”
Niko, as per usual, wore all black.
My brother scooted in after me. “Hey, Davy.” Brooke beamed at him from the front seat. “Ready for high school?”
Dave, whose sole contribution to the Goldman jewelry discovery had been to ask if it meant he could get a tattoo (I worried about his disjointed logic), said, “I hear it’s a barrel of monkeys.”
We open
ed the windows and blasted music as we drove down the winding road. Canopies of golden leaves arched above us. I could smell fall in the air, fast approaching, crisp and cool with the promise of leaves crunching under our feet and pumpkins and apple pie and cozy sweaters.
This could be the beginning of my story. There were always new beginnings, new school years and college and the world after. My story didn’t have to be of a girl on Nantucket, looking for a necklace and breaking her heart. Or I could reframe my thinking entirely: each person was a continuous story. We didn’t begin or end, rise and fall. We weren’t so contained. We were endless. We were infinite.
What would your grandmother have thought? Helen Barbanel had asked, looking at the table of World War II books. O’ma’s story had not been limited to the space of ten years, to her childhood and her teens. It had spanned more than being ripped from Nazi Germany and sent to America and raised by strangers. It had kept on going, through the fifties and the hippies and the now. It didn’t end bittersweet or optimistic; it didn’t end for decades.
And neither would my story.
* * *
The auction for the necklace happened the second week of September, a week so warm it could have still been summer, if not for the way the light had changed—a slight softening, a golden glow. I left my sweater at home when I headed over to Niko’s house. I didn’t want anything to do with the auction; I didn’t want to think about never seeing the necklace again. One day, Mom had placed it in a box, placed the box in a canvas bag, and carried it away. I tried not to let it distress me too much.
“Aren’t you desperate to know?” Niko asked. We sat on the swings in her backyard, idly pushing off the ground and drifting through the air. We faced the forest of oaks and maples behind her house, watching as the occasional bunny dashed purposefully by. “I’d kill to be there.”
“I’ll find out soon. I didn’t want to have to see someone buy O’ma’s necklace. It’s what I want to do, but it still sort of sucks.”
“Do you still miss him?”
I dug my toe into the grass, sending myself on a more forceful swing. “When you spend so much time with someone, it’s impossible not to.”
“But do you miss him?”
I could feel how much I missed him in my stomach, in my throat, in my eyes. I shrugged.
Her eyes were sharp. “Do you still want to be with him?”
“I don’t even know what that would look like.”
“You don’t have to know,” Niko said. “You’re allowed to try to figure it out.”
A few days later, we learned the amount of money the necklace had raised: six figures—over one hundred thousand dollars. And the pang at giving up O’ma’s necklace was soothed over by the knowledge of the good this money would do.
When my grandmother came to the States, she was lucky. She had people willing to take her in. She had had a woman who called her once a week for her entire life. When your people lived in a diaspora, that was what you did, whether in 1940s Europe and America, or sixteenth-century Spain and Morocco. You looked after your own.
But not everyone had the resources and community and luck O’ma had had.
We donated the money, and we did several interviews, and then we carried on. I wrote a killer college application essay and didn’t even feel too guilty about exploiting my family history to get it. Rosh Hashanah came and went. We ate sweet apples dipped in honey and tart pomegranates and dense kugel. Dad and I braided and baked round challah like O’ma had taught us. In services, we were reminded to ask for forgiveness from anyone we had wronged in the past year, before Yom Kippur arrived in ten days.
I sat outside on the back porch and stared at the light filtering through the trees and thought about how I was still madly in love with Noah Barbanel.
“Are you okay, honey?”
I looked up. Mom leaned against the frame of the French doors. When she met my gaze, she stepped outside, closing the screen behind her and sitting next to me on the bench.
I stared straight ahead at the trees. “I’m fine.”
She put her arm around me and pulled me toward her, my head resting on her shoulder. “You sure? You were quiet today.”
I could feel tears welling in the back of my eyes, but I tried to keep my voice steady. Despite myself, it cracked. “I’m just a little sad still. I feel like I should be over this. Over him.”
“Are you sure . . .” Mom started, then hesitated. “He didn’t break up with you, right? You broke up with him?”
“Technically, I guess. I felt like I had to, though.” He’d hurt me so much. He’d lied to me.
Her hand was soothing against my head, her warmth familiar and calming. “Sometimes people mess up. You have to decide if it’s worth forgiving them. And, honey, I don’t know if it’s worth holding a grudge if it makes you so unhappy. What if by forgiving him, you’d both get to be happy?”
After Mom went back inside, I stayed outside, drained of tears. Was Mom right? Should I just wave a hand and forgive him?
The stark truth stared back at me. I didn’t need to forgive him; I already had, because I understood why he’d lied to me. He’d lied because he loved his family. I’d used my anger at being lied to in order to push him away, because I was scared. Because I didn’t believe he cared about me as much as I did about him.
It was the stubborn fear of getting hurt that held me back, keeping me from reaching out to him. Because what if I got my heart broken again?
I stared out at the trees, taking deep, steadying breaths. Maybe I would get my heart broken again. But so what? At least I would have tried. I’d have no regrets. I’d never wonder—what if? Maybe, like Mom had said, I’d get to be happy.
So I decided to lay my cards on the table.
The sun lowered into the woods, stretching long shadows against the lawn. The wind tugged at my maxi skirt. The days were shorter now; it was only around five, but soon it would be full dark. I pulled out my phone and opened my messages with Noah.
Looking at the blinking cursor made my heart speed up. Too much, too quickly. I put my phone down and had to catch my breath.
I leaned my head back and stared at the sky. My backyard was thick with trees, their branches reaching out across the expanse of dark blue. When I was away from the forest, I craved it, craved deep greenery and endless trees. I could breathe in the woods like I could breathe in a bookstore: fully and easily. Now I took one deep breath after another.
Hadn’t this all started because of a handful of letters? Maybe we could work it out through letters, too.
I pulled my computer to me, and began to type.
Dear Noah,
I don’t really know how to start this letter. So I guess I’ll just start.
I was angry and hurt you lied to me, yes, but the anger should have led to a fight, not a breakup. I think you’re right; I am proud, I’m proud and I’m scared, and I should have responded to all those feelings in a better way, but instead I responded by slamming my walls up. It’s easier for me to shut people out than let them in. It’s easier to walk away than wait for someone else to leave.
I don’t want to walk away from you. I’ve never liked someone as much as I like you. I’m terrified of putting myself out here, but here I am. I miss you, and I want to be with you.
And I’m sorry, because I hurt you, too. I wanted to make you hurt as much as I did, which is horrible and unkind. And I want you to know that being without you does make me miserable. I want to be with you. So badly. You’re all I want.
And if you don’t want to be with me, I get it. We broke up. And I yelled at you, and you’re in college. But god, I want to be with you so much, it’s like a physical ache thrumming through my entire body.
You don’t have to answer this letter. But I wanted you to get it. To tell you I’m sorry. To tell you how much I care about you. To tel
l you I never should have responded the way I did, by pushing you away. To tell you I understand that choosing between me and your family was not a choice you should have had to make, that you should be able to pick both of us, that I should have been more understanding.
I love you.
Abigail
Twenty-Nine
A week later, the doorbell rang. I put down my book and went to the door in my Friday post-school outfit: leggings and an oversized T-shirt. Hopping through the mudroom, I opened the door, but no one was there.
So I looked down. And found a package sitting on my parents’ doorstep.
The paper was brown.
The string was twine.
But this time, the package was addressed to me: Abigail Schoenberg, 85 Oak Road, South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Déjà vu washed over me. The lightest, strangest feeling fluttered in my head, glitter and cotton candy and the sea. I looked down the driveway, half expecting to see the same delivery truck from months ago pulling away down the road.
I carried the box inside. Dad was at work, Dave at soccer practice, Mom upstairs in her study. I settled on the living room sofa, late afternoon light spilling over me. My hands trembled as I unwrapped the brown paper, then used a key to open the taped box inside. I lifted the box’s flaps and revealed a white creamy envelope. For Abigail.
Hands trembling, I lifted the envelope and stared at my name for a long, careful moment. Then I set it aside and turned back to the box. A black velvet case fit snuggly within. I placed it in my lap and ran a finger across the top, watching as the threads of fabric reversed directions.
Throat dry, I pulled the lid up. It opened with a concentrated snap.
O’ma’s necklace glinted against the black velvet backdrop.
I looked away, out the French doors at the trees heavy with leaves, blinking back tears. My pulse pounded in my throat and air raced through my lungs. I’d known as soon as I’d seen this package what it would be. What it was. It felt inevitable.
The Summer of Lost Letters Page 32